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The Guardian’s George Monbiot sees the neoliberal consensus collapsing. This, he argues, is the time to let go of the politics of fear. He is addressing his fellow Brits who are heading to the polls in May but his message is one that should resonate with all Canadian progressives.

Here is the first rule of politics: if you never vote for what you want, you never get it. We are told at every election to hold our noses, forget the deficiencies and betrayals and vote Labour yet again, for fear of something worse. And there will, of course, always (Read more…)

That didn’t take long. Iraqi Kurds report that ISIS has changed tactics to blunt the impact of allied air strikes. Who, aside from just about anybody, could have foreseen that turn of events?

Air strikes against Isis targets in northern Syria have failed to stop the militants from advancing towards the centre of the city of Kobani, Kurds have said, in the latest indication that aerial power alone may not defeat the jihadists.Fighting between the Islamist militants and Syrian Kurds continued unabated despite another volley of coalition air strikes in and around the Kobani enclave, Idris Nassan, Kobani’s (Read more…)

Guardian enviro-scribe George Monbiot responds to the report that Earth has suffered the loss of fully half of its wild life over the past forty years by asking why man is at war with the living world.

If the news that in the past 40 years the world has lost over 50% of its vertebrate wildlife (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish) fails to tell us that there is something wrong with the way we live, it’s hard to imagine what could. Who believes that a social and economic system which has this effect is a healthy one? Who, contemplating (Read more…)

Neoliberalism, sometimes known as “market fundamentalism”, is the scourge of our age. It infests our federal politics. Stephen Harper is a disciple. Mulcair and Trudeau may be somewhat less neoliberal but it’s a matter of degree and it ain’t much.

Neoliberalism is a path littered with flawed assumptions and empty promises. It is a cancer that eats away at social cohesion, that drives inequality that itself arises mainly out of privilege and unjust government largesse from tax favouritism to outright gifting of public property. It is the engine of economic feudalism.

Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, has additional insights into the (Read more…)

America is the heartland of corporatism. It’s highest court is an agency of corporatism. It has a “bought and paid for” Congress. It even has a supposed populist in the White House who doesn’t dare stir things up. Corporatism has captured America’s political process.

Canada dutifully follows in trail. As a petro-state, Stephen Harper is the gun bearer of the Fossil Fuelers, especially Big Oil. He’s even gone on bended knee to become the indentured servant of the Beijing politburo. Mulcair and Trudeau wait anxiously to fill his shoes.

Convalescing from a wicked cold that’s beating the crap out of me, I watched a trio of movies about amazing musicians: Joe Strummer, Ginger Baker, and Sixto Rodriguez. In the films, other musical geniuses were highlighted along the way. What a delight! But as Ginger, Jack and Eric talked about people with the gift of perfect time, my first reflexive response was, “How many kids are told they can be a great musician if they just put their mind to it?”.

In class this week, yet another student insisted that intelligence has minimal genetic basis compared to effort. Anybody (Read more…)

In a post a while back I advocate the best of our worst options for saving our species: a government that forces us be less wasteful. It’s an idea that James Lovelock proposed, and some called it fascist. But there’s a world of difference between enforcing legislation that actually protects the citizens in the long term and a police state.

John Oliver did a series of clips about how Australia managed to change their laws to ban semi-automatic weapons and seriously restrict other guns. The trilogy is well worth a watch at only 18 minutes in total. But the (Read more…)

A just world is one in which the labour forces of all nations recognize that they can no longer evade their own problems by demanding the explitation of other people. (Manifesto, p. 245)

To be truly free…we must be prepared to contemplate revolution. (Manifesto, p. 253)

Via The Guardian

It’s been interesting to see the path Monbiot‘s taken to offer grand solutions to the problem of climate change – well, the problems inherent to human nature, really. He offers a means to overthrow the current world-wide governmental system, then a means for an overseeing organization (Read more…)

He writes of the plight of Britons but he could as easily be speaking to you.

Most of the world’s people are decent, honest and kind. Most of those who dominate us are inveterate bastards…

“With a most inhuman cruelty, they who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness.” This government, whose mismanagement of the economy has forced so many into the arms of the state, blames the sick, the unemployed, the underpaid for a crisis caused by the feral elite – and punishes them accordingly. Most of those affected by the bedroom tax

An interesting essay from George Monbiot today on the grooming of oligarchs and why, even though they govern in our name, they don’t rule on our behalf. They rule as they were born and raised to rule. An excerpt.

In the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explains that the nobles of pre-revolutionary France “did not regard themselves as representative of the nation, but as a separate ruling caste which might have much more in common with a foreign people of the same society and condition than with its compatriots”.

Rio + 20 was, according to U.N. Gen-Sec Ban Moon, too important to fail yet that’s exactly what it did and that’s all it did – fail.

Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, calls it, “the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war.“

“The Earth’s living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep